Mumbai: Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by Taliban, has been conferred with the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice in Mumbai.The Harmony Foundation, a city-based non-government organization, yesterday honored the 15-year-old girl with the award in absentia.Yousafzai, who had voiced her support for girls' education in the terror-infested Swat valley, was shot at by a group of Taliban terrorists on Oct. 9. She is currently under treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK.

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Two of the biggest recipients of British aid in Africa have broken a United Nations arms embargo by supplying rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo with weapons and ammunition, a Security Council investigation found last night.

M23 rebels sit at the back of a pick-up truck captured a week before and formerly used by the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as they carry supplies through BunaganaPhoto: AFP

By David Blair

6:00AM BST 17 Oct 2012

Rwanda and Uganda, which will receive £75 million and £101.5 million of British aid respectively this year, are giving "direct military support" to the "M23" guerrillas in Congo, according to a UN "Group of Experts".

The "M23" movement, led by an indicted war criminal, has started a new round of bloodshed in eastern Congo, forcing about 470,000 people to flee their homes since March.

Andrew Mitchell, the former International Development Secretary, delayed a payment of £16 million of British money to Rwanda when these allegations first surfaced in July. On his last day in office before moving to become Chief Whip last month,Mr Mitchell released this sum into Rwandan government coffers, with half the money tied to health and education.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

How Hamas acquired its 10,000-rocket arsenal

A rocket display in the southern town of Sderot, for years Hamas's primary target (photo credit: Moshe Shai/Flash 90)

On Sunday afternoon, in a moshav near Ashkelon, Eyal went out to the fields behind his father’s house. Rockets that Iron Dome does not shoot down — those reported to have landed in “open areas” — litter his father’s cotton fields and groves. A Thai worker led him to the site of a recent barrage, where the rusty hull of a rocket lay in the soil.

Why am I not surprised in this linked article that Iran is about to go into uranium overdrive? A few weeks ago the NY Times, as a sop to Obama's image, was telling us that promising, secret back-door negotiations were going on between the Mullahs and the White House, followed by protests from both that this wasn't so. Even so, Obama has just stated that he wants to play diplomatic rope-a-dope with Iran. No, not him pretending to be trapped against the ropes, but Iran play-acting, as Obama wears himself out throwing diplomatic punches round after round that never land.

Islamic militants fired more than 110 rockets and mortars into Israeli territory over the past four days in attacks that injured eight Israelis, according to a report issued by the Israeli Defense Forces Strategic Division.

The unprovoked attacks have been dispersed throughout the Jewish state’s southern territory and have forced more than a million civilians into bomb shelters. One soldier has been critically injured in the barrage.

The Israel Project says that 898 rockets have fallen on Israel thus far in 2012—over 200 more than hit Israel in the entirety of 2011.

The Obama administration has yet to issue a statement about the attacks. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro recently expressed sympathy via Twitter to those affected by the near-constant assault.

The most recent barrage comes on the heels of a three-month calm between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Syria's opposition bloc has yet to be offered the chair left empty after Assad was no longer welcome in Cairo [AFP]

The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) has said its six member states decided to recognise the newly formed National Coalition of the Syrian opposition as the "legitimate representative" of the Syrian people.

The GCC's move came a year after the Arab League suspended Syria's membership, and as the National Coalition met Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on Monday, buoyed by the hard-won unity deal.The Arab League also recognised the newly formed Syrian opposition bloc's role, urging more opposition groups to join the coalition. But their official phrasing was reportedly not as strong as the wording used by the GCC.

"The states of the council announce recognising the National Coalition for the Forces of the Syrian Revolution and Opposition ... as the legitimate representative of the brotherly Syrian people," GCC chief Abdullatif al-Zayani said in a statement on Monday.

The oil-rich bloc, which comprises Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, would support the coalition "in order to achieve the aspirations of the Syrian people in hope that this will be a step towards a quick political transfer of power," Zayani said.

He hoped its formation would lead to ending the bloodshed and "a general national congress to pave the way to build a state ruled by law and open to all its citizens".

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Cairo, said, "The newly established coalition is now starting to get the recognition it needs from other bodies."

In the winter of 1942 only the striking beauty of the young Indian woman reading a book on a London park bench in her lunch hour would have seemed exceptional.

A statue has now been unveiled by Princess Anne near the bench in Gordon Square, commissioned by a small group determined that the extraordinary story of Noor Inayat Khan, a gentle artistic intellectual who became a secret agent in occupied France and died aged 30 in Dachau concentration camp, should not be forgotten.

The Syrian National Council says it has received over $20 million in aid from Libya since it was founded in October 2011. It makes Libya its most important donor by far. These figures were released against the background of increasing pressure on the SNC to marginalise extremist elements within its ranks.

In a detailed financial report published on Thursday, 1 November, the SNC states that total foreign donations have reached $40.4 million, half of which was given by Libya and the other half by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. In more precise figures, $20.4 million originated from Libya, followed by $15 million from Qatar and $5 million from the UAE. The money was said to have been deposited in two bank accounts in Qatar and Turkey.

The violence that has engulfed the country in the last two years means that, at the time of writing, Libya is unlikely to feature too highly on many people’s travel wish-lists.

But the troubled north African country has enormous potential as a tourist destination, and is likely to rise as a holiday hotspot in the near to medium future – according to a survey of key figures in the travel industry.

Ancient and epic: Libya is home to historic sites, including the Roman city of Leptis Magna

This week has seen the desert state – which was ravaged by civil war as recently as October last year – take a small step back into potential visitors’ eyelines by setting up a promotional stand at World Travel Market (WTM), an influential travel convention held every November at London’s ExCel Centre.

And a survey of industry professionals has suggested that Libya can look forward to a promising future.

In the poll, which saw 1300 tourism officials interviewed, over half of those surveyed – 56 per cent – believed that Libya has all the ingredients to become a major destination.

Only 10 per cent rejected the idea of Libya as a holiday option.

‘Libya could become one of tourism’s most exciting destinations in the future,’ says WTM director Simon Press.

‘Many destinations, such as Vietnam and Croatia, have repositioned from conflict zones to tourism hotspots, and there is no reason why, over time, Libya cannot do the same.’

The professional core of the U.S. military overwhelmingly favors Mitt Romney over President Obama in the upcoming election — but not because of any particular military issues, according to a new poll of more than 3,100 active and reserve troops.

Respondents rated the economy and the candidates’ character as their most important considerations and all but ignored the war in Afghanistan as an issue of concern.

The Military Times Poll is a secure email survey of active-duty, National Guard and reserve members who are subscribers to the Military Times newspapers (see How We Did It, below).

Though he sold himself as either a costumed buffoon, a wild-eyed terrorist, or a wary reformer, Qaddafi's rule from his unlikely rise to his inevitable fall was one of the most cunning and improbable feats of modern dictatorships

Qaddafi speaks to the summit meeting of the nonalignednations in Sri Lanka,

August 1976 / AP

In the first few months of 1969, Libya was so filled with rumors that the country's senior military leadership would oust the king in a bloodless coup that, when the coup actually happened on September 1, nobody bothered to check who had led it. A handful of military vehicles had rolled up to government offices and communication centers, quietly shutting down the monarchy in what was widely seen as a necessary and overdue transition. King Idris's government had become so incapable and despised that neither his own personal guard nor the massive U.S. military force then stationed outside Tripoli intervened. Army units around the country, believing that the coup was an implicit order from the military chiefs, quickly secured local government offices. Not a single death was reported; all of Libya, it seemed, had welcomed the military revolution.

Pluto, the Planet of Evolutionary Transformation

Pluto in its highest astrological or symbolic aspect, in the Jungian sense, is the planet of evolution, urging us to be all that Nature and the Cosmos intended us to be. This is right in our DNA according to esoteric Yogic science and tradition, which teach that the actual energy of transformation lies dormant at the base of our spine.